MMOs and game design

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Do you like class specific questlines?

I’ve been easing off on my main in WoW lately as burnout hits with Wrath. I’m still enjoying the weekly raids, but if I have learned anything from my time on MMOs, it is that it is totally fine to play less when you aren’t in the mood.

And all it means is more time for levelling alts with sisters/ friends on other servers, playing single player games, and enjoying the Spring sunshine. So, in the spirit of new alts, I picked up a new night elf druid chick. And there were two things I had completely for gotten about low level night elves, and druids.

1. The Ban’Ethil Barrow Den is a maze of night elf hating monstrosity!

The Night Elf starting zone, Teldrassil, is generally very good. Even after five years of Blizzard improving on quest layout, it stands up pretty well. There is more running around from one end of the zone to the other than I’d expect to see in a more modern zone, but they did a great job of hiding extra little quests away. I’m sure I find more new quests that I haven’t seen before every time I go there.

However. There is one unholy blight on the face of Teldrassil and it is the barrow den. This is an underground mazelike area with a few associated low level quests. I got lost in there. Everyone gets lost in there.

But I had a saviour🙂

I was wandering around, hopelessly lost, and a high level (well, level 14!!) night elf warrior gallently asked me whether I was OK. I said, pathetically, “I’m lost!” and he offered to come help me find my quests.

This screenie shows us sitting down to discuss things with another lost little druid girl who we picked up en route.

I feel we may have set the cause of feminism back about 50 years by being such pathetic girlies and needing to be rescued by a brave warrior. But it was very nice of him to take the time, so thanks if you are reading.

2. Class quests are really pretty darn cool

Druids get a glut of class quests fairly early on in the levelling period. There’s the bear form quest at level 10, poison curing quest at 14, and then the quest for sealion form and cat form not very long after that.

And it’s great! What I had forgotten is that after you finish the quest for the bear form, you get a special letter in the mail.

A special druid letter from your trainer saying how awesome it was that you got your bear form, and reminding you that he has another class quest lined up when you get to 14th level.

It’s still cool, even five years on after launch. I do find that class specific quests do a great job of immersing me into the setting, and — yes — making me feel a bit special.

I was talking about SWTOR over the weekend and their stated goal of getting large numbers of subscribers. One of the big draws to this Star Wars MMO is that every single class will have its own fully featured storyline with associated quests, all the way to level cap. I assume they will mix this up with some general quests and group content, but still, it’s a very appealing idea.

23 thoughts on “Do you like class specific questlines?”

Give more class quests! One of my favorite quests in the entire game is the mage one for the polymorph pig. It’s very simple and very silly – you create tons if miniature sheep that you aoe down. But it makes me giggle – and I just loved having the dates with that mystic guy up in the tower, offering me quests that felt like “for your eyes only”.

Same goes with the rogue poison quest. That felt SO roguish! WTB more of those.

I loved the class questions, but since the LFD system was introduced I have found that they often fall by the wayside, which is a shame. I enjoyed the Warlock ones back in the day, and the mage ones have been fun, but a heavy night of using the Dungeon Finder has made the quests grey, so I tend not to bother.

For my mage I have gone out of my way to do some of the class quests, for my ret paladin I didn’t bother. For my warrior I’m trying to do them all. On my priest I barely noticed them.

My first ever raid was that barrow. I grouped for the quests, and our group leader decided to just keep on inviting people. There were 13 of us in the end, and I left when I realised that I couldn’t complete the quests while in a raid.

There is no quest for cat form for alliance. The “cat ghost” is in Moonglade but the quest was never implemented.

Class quests are great. I think they should all be long and tedious. Because that is what’ll make them epic in memory. The warlock pet quests are very good in that regard. They are painful but you get a great reward, your companion.

On the other side, they shouldn’t invest too much time in content the majority cannot see. The Quel’delar quest line is such a major fail. They’ve created a story arc which only a few percent of the players can enjoy. Sunwell all again. If you invest time and make something great, make it so that all player can see and apreciate your work.

I’ve always loved the class quests. Some of the WoW ones are more than a little arduous (Horde Shaman Water Torem Quest? I’m looking at you) but they do give you an excellent idea of what your class is actually meant to be about beyond a selection of random buttons.

What I really liked was the old Class Weapon quests for Hunters and Priests. Both of which, among other things, required you be able to prove that you understand your class in order to be able to get them. A hunter with their bow and staff or a priest with their staff was a player who knew what they were doing.

I love class quests. I levelled my first priest alongside a friend’s druid and I was extremely jealous of her for constantly being off on some special quests of her own while I only got one to buff a lost sentinel with fortitude and nothing after that. On my alts I quite enjoyed finding out what special class quests they got as well, hunters learning how to tame pets, warlocks getting their demons, shamans getting their totems and so on. On my mage I missed a lot of the lower level class quests however because they all started in Stormwind, my mage was a Draenei and she never got one of those breadcrumb quests that told her to go over there and check it out.

I really loved the epic questlines for Paladins and Warlocks to get their level 60 mounts. They did not get replaced, but as they are hard, expensive, lengthy and nobody really does the old dungeons anymore, you can now simply buy the spell/horse at the trainer. Quite a pity, a skirmish-style quest scaling and a bit modernization of lengthy travelling could have preserved the really epic questline.

For a true MMO gamer a “Damsel in Distress” situation is about as rewarding as slaying a dragon.

I also once picked up a lost player in the barrows, but he did not really follow me and was obviously a male teen. Absolutely not satisfying. I was also playing a female rogue char that never made it much higher level-wise (I think Rogues just stink – but this is just the view of a Warlock and Pally player), and this really destroys the “Damsel in Distress” experience.

Nobody wanted my Pally as tank before the Paladin miracle updates. There were no damsels in need of help in all of Elwynn Forest. They only wanted healing. Felt bad. This is how I became a vile Warlock.😉

The only somewhat damsel-like experience I had was with was a female Paladin(a). But she kicked butt. So not really a damsel experience, but it was also connected with the class quest to get the epic hammer “Verigan’s Fist”. Swimming to Shadowfang Keep with her (yup, we feared the mobs on the road and rather tried swimming through the “sea dragons” (=Daggerspine Nagas) ^^) was really cool.

There is an unlimited amount of player who can’t find the entrance to the ICC5 instances. If you enjoy saving “Damsels in Distress”, wipe there!🙂

To be fair, it is hard to find. You have to fly a straight line from the grave yard for about 10 seconds and you’re there… -.-

I think it was a very good move to make the class mounts buyable because there is no epic feel if you two man the warlock quest with an 80. The quest was epic and the fight was very challenging back then in appropriate gear.

But that part died when the level cap was removed. It just meant that an 80 had to do the quest for you. It’s always wrong if one of your tasks needs to be finished by someone else.🙂

I like the idea of having class quests which scale (or scale you down) and force you to play your class to continue. On the other side, part of the cool stuff of the mount quests where that you did it together with friends.

I do think that the class quests will be a great feature. I’m a little concerned that there may not be much else in the way of great features.

If the way to play SWTOR is to buy it, play through 8 storylines in a couple of months then cancel until the expansion comes along in a couple of years I’ll definitely be doing those things but feeling a little disappointed.

I loved my Paladin quests especially my mount quests. It gave me an appreciate & an attachement to my pony that all of my other mounts combined could ever give.

I’m still pretty sad that they did away with it but I can understand why they did it though. Who wants to go into Dire Maul to help someone else do a quest? Not many, so Blizzard didn’t want to discourage Paladins & Warlocks from getting these precious mounts so they just made them spells & the option was still there to try the almighty quests later on if you wanted to.
❤ Fuu

I always enjoyed class quests in any MMO, and to a degree always wished the devs would spend even more time making those class quests race-dependent, where appropriate.

Not sure I buy the whole “small percentage of players see that content” argument though. It’s not the same as, say, building Naxx back in the days of Vanilla WoW then barely anyone could actually see it. It’s *just* a class quest, and while I’m no longer an altoholic myself, millions of other people are and separating those quests will give them a little something new to look forward to on an alt, when everything else will be repeated quests/content.

I think the class quests in WoW, which you do while leveling up, are good. They add some flavor to the class but don’t tell important stories OF THE WORLD. They make you feel special, because you are class X, without making someone feel he misses something. As long as he doesn’t play a class without quests.

I didn’t raid on my priest and couldn’t do the Benediction quest chain, that was a big disappointment for me. It felt, to me, like it is part of a “complete priest”. I stopped playing him and not being able to do this quest was part of it. Max-level “class quests” should be accessible for everyone who wants to do it. The two mount quests could be done by everyone, the priest and hunter quest couldn’t.

But what I really dislike is if they implement a good quest chain with a story related to the WORLD (of Warcraft) and not related to your character and then reserve that quest chain for a minority. That’s what i dislike.

I love class quests. I’ll second Issy and wish for more, including some to teach the class mechanics. It might even be nice to see ones for teaching the different talent trees, complete with free respecs, to allow for players to get a stronger in-game feel for their class and how they want to play it.

(I know, I know, I’m not really a huge fan of class-based design, but if you’re going to do it, do it well.)

This sort of thing doesn’t have to be linked to class based design (although it could be a neat way to teach class skills). It could be linked to race, faction, alliance with some in game grouping, pet or mount, or anything really. Just it needs to be directly linked to choices you made at character creation, maybe even choices made afterwards, but definitely something to do with your character background.

I was so disappointed by the lack of a cat form quest that I actually stopped playing that character. My memory of that day is incredibly sharp, despite being almost 5 years ago.

That druid was one of the first characters I ever made, and I LOVED the bear form quest. I got to 14, and I was sent on an epic quest to go learn how to cure poison. I got to 16, and I was sent all the way to the other continent to learn my aquatic form.

I was so excited about getting to level 20 on that character, because I had seen a level 20 druid who was in cat form, and my imagination was going wild with what kind of incredibly epic quest the game was going to send me on to get it. I specifically remember being in Wailing Caverns, dinging 20, and telling my group that I could finally go start my cat form quest!

I ran back to Thunder Bluff to talk to my trainer (he’s the one who gave me all the other quests), and what do I see? Cat Form. 20 silver. The weight of my disappointment crushed that character like a ton of bricks.